Throwing out the old

It's cold here today.  A perfect day to go get back in your bed and pretend you're hibernating.  At least until the kids come home at 3:00.  Even though I would have loved to do that, I decided to take some time and straighten up our food areas.  

I don't have a pantry in the kitchen to hide all of our food (and I'm not afraid to admit that I am jealous of some of the pantries my friends do have).  Most of our food sits on a baker's rack we have in the kitchen.  We store our cereal, crackers, peanut butter, canned food, boxed food, extra items that we bought double of, all on that rack.  One cabinet in our kitchen is designated a snack cabinet.  That way if the girls want a snack they go to the cabinet instead of searching high and low for something to snack on.  Then I have my cabinets above my stove that houses seasonings, spices, cake decorating supplies.  Today I decided to clean them out and get rid of food that was expired.  Also it was looking like a jumble upped mess and I was tired of looking at it.  

One thought that came into my head as I was cleaning, was how time flies.  I found a bag of whole wheat flour that I swore I bought not too long ago and the expiration date was 2013.  The fact that it was buried under many other items of food, shows that I more than likely did purchase it back in 2013.  I found a few cooking soups, some noodles, and other things that expired either the end of 2013 or early 2014.  I probably found a recipe that sounded good, bought the appropriate items to make the dinner and then promptly went out to McDonald's for a burger. 

After also getting rid of a ton of candy from various parades we attended and school parties for the last couple holidays, I ended up with a trash bag and a half of thrown away food.  Throwing away food drives me crazy.  I know there are people out there who don't have money for food and here I am throwing away a large amount of it.  How do I remedy that in this New Year?

First, I'm going to stick to mostly my tried and true recipes.  I like to try new things and sometimes the old comfort foods are just too comfortable and make me want something different.  Problem is that when I buy the ingredients the recipe calls for and I make it once and it's just blah, I don't make it again and then leftover stuff not all used in the recipe gets wasted.  My tried and true recipes are also fairly simple.  Some of the recipes I think sound good and I buy the stuff for, have a million steps that make me throw my hand's in the air and head for KFC.  I think I'll put a limit on two new recipes a month that are easy to make with ingredients I already keep on hand. 

Second, when I make out my menu page each week, I need to take an inventory of what I do have on hand already and how I can incorporate those ingredients into the menu.  Too many times I run to the store to grab the menu items only to come home and realize I already have 2 cream of chicken soups on the rack and I just bought 2 more. 

Third, tell the people that live in this house I will buy no more fruit snacks until the 100 packages shoved in the snack cabinet are all gone.  This is a problem when the girls come shopping with me. They like to ask for stuff and I usually buy each girl one treat which sometimes ends up as duplicates because I didn't check to see what we had first. Maybe I need to have the girls pick out their snack of choice before they hit the store and then that's what they get and no substitutions.  

I feel like I actually accomplished something today good for myself.  I will take the tips I wrote above and try to make my shopping/cooking/eating time less wasteful this year.  

Maybe tomorrow I will feel motivated to clean out the cup cabinet.  Gonna need a bigger trash can for that one.